Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
– Robert Palmer (Addicted to Love)
=/\=
They beamed down near a PX in Saigon and walked in. A bored-looking Asian hostess looked them over. "Sit anywhere," she said.
There was a pinup calendar on the wall – Bettie Page – Dan looked it over. It was turned to October of 1957, an image of Bettie, in lingerie, being spanked by a blonde, also in lingerie. The blonde appeared to be carefully concentrating on what she was doing.
The first twenty days of that month's page were ticked off. The hostess turned on a radio and toured around the dial until she was able to get a Hong Kong station. It was an acoustic duet, two young fellows singing –
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
the movie wasn't so hot
It didn't have much of a plot
we fell asleep, our goose is cooked
our reputation is shot
Polly went over to the bar. "What'll it be?" asked the hostess.
Polly adjusted her nurse's uniform. "Just coffee, thanks."
The hostess frowned, but poured. The tips for pouring coffee were a lot less generous than those for pouring whiskey.
A man walked in, lean and tall, with captain's bars on his uniform. "Usual", was all he said.
The hostess got him a bottle of German beer and opened it. He took it from her and approached the table where Polly was sitting. "New in town?"
She nodded and glanced over at Dan, who came over. Dan was wearing a uniform with sergeant's stripes. The stranger outranked him. "I was just deployed today, myself," Dan said, and then introduced both of them.
"Hank Cramer," said the stranger, "I could give you a tour, Nurse Porter."
"Perhaps," she said, and then added, "Got the time?"
"Nineteen hundred hours," Cramer said, reading off a beaten up wristwatch with a scratched metal band. He took out two cigarettes. "Nurse Porter?"
"Uh, sure," Polly said, getting up. She had never smoked a day in her life, and wasn't about to start. But she also knew that the end was near for one Hank Cramer. He would be picked off by a sniper while having a smoke, in less than five minutes. All she had to do was duck.
=/\=
In 2063, Deirdre and Carmen were bundled against the cold. "Dammit, this is horrible!" Carmen danced around, teeth chattering. What she wouldn't give for a nip of something, anything.
"It's the North Pole, gawd," Deirdre replied.
There was a whistling sound, and a fireball erupted in midair. They leapt behind a snow bank in time to hear a loud crash, complete with whining, scraping metal.
Once it appeared that the whining and scraping had ceased, they both got up and ran over. "That's the Borg sphere," Deirdre said.
Carmen ran a scanner along it, "Two barely registering life forms. They register more like mechanical signatures, truth be told."
"Yeah, the scanners of the time aren't good enough to detect the barest sparks of life those two drones are giving off," Deirdre agreed, "and then they end up assimilating a few folk in the 2150s. It isn't until then that people start to take Zefrem Cochrane seriously. He mentions, a few days from now, actually, that there are threats and people just think he's been pounding back a few. But I guess the changes that were made; they must prove that the Borg have a bit of a place in our true, original history."
"Just like everyone, and everything else," Carmen said, "you can't deny them their place; you'll end up throwing out the Picards and the Kirks and the Janeways and the Maddens – all of those babies, and sometimes rather literally – out with the Borg bath water."
"What should we be checking for?" Deirdre asked.
"Well, my understanding is that the original history was changed when someone came in and finished the job. That is, they finished off those two barely surviving drones."
"But that was one version, right? So do you think that person would come back, in a second iteration?"
"Huh," Carmen thought for a moment, "perhaps not. We can go to March of 2153 and eavesdrop on Jonathan Archer. That should confirm things, one way or the other. Let's go; I'm freezing my arse off."
=/\=
Hoshi called a meeting of the senior staff. "Wait here," she said to Milton. They were still in her Ready Room.
"But I'd like to come with you," he whined a little. He did have the good sense to realize that if she was talking about him behind his back, it could not be to the good.
"I know," she kissed him, playful again. Her emotions seemed to turn on a dime. "But you need to," she grabbed at him a little bit, "save your strength."
"All right," he said, but his eyes betrayed his uneasiness.
Hoshi hustled herself over to the main conference room. "All right, people, listen up!" she barked, "I want some fast work done."
"Understood," Jun said, speaking for the rest of them.
"That time ship – I want you to learn everything you can about it, Kira and Frank."
"I'm on it," Frank said. That, at least, was a relatively cushy assignment. All he really needed to do was find one thing and she would likely be satisfied. All he had to do was convince Kira when to stop looking.
"I need to know how it works. So don't break anything," she snarled at Frank, "When you figure out its propulsion system, get Shelby in and teach it to her. See if she can figure out its idiosyncrasies. For scientific data it might collect, work together and determine what the hell its readings are."
"Got it, Ma," Kira confirmed.
Hoshi said, "If you find any information on weapons or defense, bring in Aidan to figure it out and get the nuances down pat. For Communications, contact Jun, of course."
"I'll be ready, Ma."
"Izo," Hoshi said, "You'll find out how to work it. Get Walker into the booth if you have to. I doubt he's had any sort of training against torture. He should break easily, spill it all and cry like a baby while he's at it. Try not to kill him."
"But Ma!" Izo seemed disappointed.
"You or I will take care of that later, I promise," Hoshi said, "Arashi, when we start figuring out the components, start estimating how much it'll cost to buy any raw materials we can't just steal. I don't love trading with the Klingons but we might have to do that."
"Sure, Ma."
"And me?" Mark asked.
"Start making me hyposprays and start hiding them around the ship, starting with my quarters, the Ready Room and even under the captain's chair. Give me a schematic, a map, showing where any of them are. Give a copy to Izo, too."
"What are these hyposprays supposed to do?"
"Knock out a horse."
=/\=
You're addicted to love, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, might as well face it
Might as well face it, might as well face it
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
Might as well face it, you're addicted to love
– Robert Palmer (Addicted to Love)